Intrepid vs. DIY

When I first started writing this blog, there is no way I could have conceived of participating in anything like an organized tour for a vacation. I mean, why would I? It just didn't seem like it was necessary or worth it to me. It likely would cost more; I'd have less freedom to do whatever I wanted; and I might have to travel with some people that I really didn't care for, let alone want to spend a week or more with together. I just couldn't see any upside. Day trip tours maybe. MAYBE! A whole week or a whole vacation? Forget about it.

Almost 12 years later, my opinion has changed a little. Over the past dozen years (but really just the past 10), we've booked an organized tour for three trips to sub-Saharan Africa, two trips to South America and one trip to Portugal. You could make a case that our 2022 trip to Costa Rica and our 2017 trip to Alaska (cruise) were also organized tours. I won't take the time to debate that if that's what you think. There have definitely been significant benefits particularly regarding in-country transportation on some organized tours. It would have been way more difficult to do it ourselves. 

As a very quick aside and because I won't feel credible if I don't say this...we would under ordinary circumstances never, ever, ever participate in an organized tour in Portugal or western Europe in general. But considering we needed a confirmed negative COVID test to board a flight back home, we figured it would be a good idea to have a guide on hand who could get us to a testing site so we could get home on schedule. And that part worked just great. Was it worth the extra cost and the frustration of being with people we weren't crazy about? Yes, it probably was. Probably.

Slaty-tailed trogon, Caracol, Belize.

So considering all that, when it came time to book a trip to Belize and Guatemala, I did something I never would have done 12 years ago and I instantly looked for a tour company to take us around Belize with a quick border crossing into Guatemala to see the Mayan ruins at Tikal. I settled on Intrepid Travel's "Land of Belize" tour. Eight days, seven nights in mid-January at a cost of $2,270 per person. We'd need to pay for two and we weren't willing to wait and see if Intrepid put this tour on sale (which they do sometimes...) so that would be $4,540 for the week for the both of us. Seemed like a lot..but OK, we can swing it. And it's no hassle, especially on the transportation front.

Then one day I was on Intrepid's site and I read a review of this tour which effectively said that one drawback was that the hotels were pretty basic level accommodations. Now, at one time in my life, I wouldn't care about that but as I've aged, I've come to appreciate paying for some comfort in accommodations. We've also been disappointed with the quality of the digs on some organized tours, most notably in Peru and Uganda (both through Gadventures). Basic was a bit concerning here.

So I had a thought...what if we organized this trip ourselves. Could we do it cheaper? Turns out I thought we could. And I thought we could get significantly better accommodations. So with a price to beat of $2,270, here's what we did.

Spoiler alert...this is not EXACTLY the same itinerary. We started out trying to duplicate it day for day but we made some modifications to (in our estimation) improve our experience. Improved and cheaper would be even better than just cheaper.

One of the two s'mores pits at Ka'ana Hotel. Nightly s'mores are complimentary with your stay. 

Hotels

Intrepid's itinerary included one night in Belize City; one night in Orange Walk; three nights in San Ignacio; and two nights in Caye Caulker. Total of seven nights.

We decided to adjust Intrepid's agenda just a bit and stay in just two places (moving around is a pain; less moving / fewer hotels = better for us). We opted for four nights in San Ignacio's Ka'ana Hotel and Resort (Ka'ana is part of the Small Luxury Hotels of the World portfolio) and four nights (note the extra night there) at Ambergris Caye's Best Western Grand Baymen Gardens. 

Ka'ana was our splurge on this trip. This resort is not cheap (upwards of $300 US per night) but it was definitely a very comfortable place to stay and that was, after all, the point of this whole idea. No complaints about what we spent and what we got here. Grand Baymen Gardens was definitely less plush but it was clean and came with a kitchen. These two hotels were definitely the largest expense on this trip. But then again, they most often are. And...we took care of all our lodging (and an extra night) for less than what we would have spent on one Intrepid tour and our accommodations were much better. I can't emphasize that enough. MUCH BETTER.

So, yes, we didn't do exactly what Intrepid had planned. We could not find anything (admittedly from reading about it online) more appealing about Belize City than San Ignacio so we figured a swap there for an extra night in San Ignacio was an upgrade. We also (without ever having visited Caye Caulker) saw Ambergris Caye as an equivalent to Caye Caulker. After having visited both, I think we made the right call.

See my description below under Tours about my logic in skipping Orange Walk.

Hotel Cost: $2,152. Target to beat is $4,540.

Tropic Air's plane for our 13 minute flight from San Pedro to Belize City.

Transportation

Probably the greatest obstacle to me planning this trip myself was the transportation we'd need to get around the country. Intrepid would have taken us from Belize City to Orange Walk to San Ignacio and then back to Belize City to catch a water taxi to Caye Caulker (included both ways with the tour price) and back again. That's a lot of getting around and a lot of logistics, not to mention the fact that we'd need to find someone or some company that we trusted. It's way easier to just walk out of your hotel and find things taken care of you for the day.

We definitely simplified the transportation situation by reducing the number of hotels we stayed in. Our transportation itinerary would take us from Belize City Municipal Airport direct to our hotel in San Ignacio; then back again to the ferry terminal near Belize City; a one-way ferry ride to San Pedro on Ambergris Caye; round-trip transportation to and from our hotel on Ambergris Caye; and then a plane ride back to Belize City Airport. That list was definitely simpler but it also pretty much mirrored Intrepid's included transportation, except for the plane ride back to Belize City, which we saw as an upgrade, and our transportation on Ambergris Caye, which was a four day golf cart rental. We also saw THAT as an upgrade.

Full disclosure, we spent a lot to get to and from San Ignacio. Like $250. We figured it was worth it because we (1) wanted private transportation and (2) wanted to stay true to mimicking Intrepid's itinerary which would also be private (albeit with more people). It was also the trip that required the most research in terms of price and reviews. We needed reliablity and cost effectiveness but ultimately we'd pay a bit more for service. I think we got that. We used a company called Mayawalk Tours out of San Ignacio and had no issues whatsoever. Great choice for us.

Transportation Cost: $643 (Total Cost $2,795). Target to beat is $4,540.

Tikal's Temple I. I know I already used this pic elsewhere but this is my favorite Tikal pic.

Tours

One of the benefits of joining an organized tour is the array of day trips that are often included in your itinerary. Intrepid's "Land of Belize" trip features four tours: (1) a day trip via boat to the Mayan archaeological site of Lamanai (with birdwatching from the boat along the way); (2) a visit to the San Antonio Women's Co-operative for a cooking demonstration; (3) a cross-border excursion into Guatemala to visit the Mayan city of Tikal; and (4) an orientation walk around Caye Caulker.

We didn't plan to match that agenda. We did go to Tikal (I mean...OF COURSE we went to Tikal) and we figured heading to the old Mayan city of Caracol would equal or best Lamanai (Caracol is generally considered to be the most impressive Mayan site in Belize) so skipping Orange Walk would not be a giant loss (that finishes out my note about Orange Walk hotel above...). 

To substitute for the other two tours, we picked a food tour in Ambergris Caye (Belize Food's Savor Belize Dinner Tour) and a hiking and birdwatching tour near San Ignacio. Based on the theme and/or length of these tours, we figured they were at least comparable to what we missed out on at the Women's Cooperative and in Caye Caulker. 

Tours Cost: $1,042 (Total Cost $3,837). Target to beat is $4,540.

Ka'ana's fry jacks with egg, beans, cheese and ham. These were the best far of all the fry jacks we ate and they come with the room.

Meals

Intrepid's itinerary included one breakfast, two lunches and one dinner.  We got breakfast included with our room rate at Ka'ana (so four included breakfasts) and our tours to Tikal and Caracol and our birdwatching / hike also included lunch. Add in dinner as part of our Ambergris Caye walk and I figure four breakfasts,  three lunches and one dinner eclipse what Intrepid was offering. 

Meals Cost: $0 (Total Cost $3,837). And that's it. Target was $4,540.

Overall, we bested Intrepid's cost by $703. I think that's pretty good. I think that's worth spending the time to customize our itinerary to do what we wanted and choose our accommodations. Ultimately, we managed to upgrade our hotels significantly, pick our tours, add a night to the agenda and still cut our costs. I mean what else could we want?

A little disclaimer here: this WAS an expensive trip (and the total cost is NOT the cost above). We made it that way based on our choice of hotels and opting for private transportation for only our group. Could we have done it cheaper than this? Sure we could. But the point here was to beat our benchmark in Intrepid's tour cost AND get some really good hotels. We definitely achieved those objectives. 

Does this mean we'll be planning everything ourselves from now on? Absolutely not. We still have three more major trips this year and the last one we are signed up for a tour (via GAdventures) for at least part of our time in southern Africa. There is more than one way to do traveling. Ultimately, different approaches do work. It's OK to tour to one place and DIY to another. I expect we'll continue to take a combination of both approaches in the future. But for January in Belize, we definitely picked the right way for my money.

The savings without the extra night we added would have been $901, by the way.

Fresh red snapper, anyone? At Caramba Bar and Grill, San Pedro.

Octopus's Garden

WHAMMMMM!!!!!

It's late January 2025 in Belize and we are in about the tiniest boat possible racing for the shore of Ambergris Caye (pronounced amber-grease key), the largest of many, many islands off the east coast of Belize's mainland. We are in the beach portion of our trip. Our expectation here was crystal clear waters that would be so calm that you can see the sand at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea teaming with multicolored tropical fish and turtles and rays and other marine life without even getting into the water. We were thinking smooth sailing; bright and warm sun; and water so beautifully aqua that it would rival what we found in the Bahamas in 2020.

Belize had other ideas. Or maybe it was just Mother Nature. A winter front had dropped over the western Caribbean. It was cold (well...cold for the beach). It was windy. It was wavy. It rained. And all that made the water angrier than we had any reasonable right to expect. That boat ride back to shore was an ordeal. We clung to the boat. We made sure that we had everything that could fly out of the boat strapped and tied down and fully secured. And every time we crested a wave, the hull of the boat slammed down on the water in a way that made you feel like the whole boat could just break in two. It didn't, but every time it dropped down onto the other side of a wave, it hit my lower back and telegraphed up my spine in a decidedly non-pleasant way.

And we thought we'd have a nice calm sunny winter getaway at the beach...

Sunny beach vacation? Not so much. I did NOT sign up for this.

We split this eight night trip pretty much equally between the jungle and the beach. The jungle on the west side of Belize was amazing and the perfect setting for some Mayan history and some incredible birdwatching. The beach portion of the week away was scheduled to be spent exploring the barrier reef off of Belize's east coast, which is supposed to be the second best barrier reef in the world (after the Great Barrier Reef in Australia). That meant lots of time in boats and lots of time in the water looking down.

Our plan in our three and a half days staying on Ambergris Caye was to spend two and a half of those days on and in the water. Day number one was planned at Hol Chan Marine Reserve (that's essentially the barrier reef) followed by a stop at Shark Ray Alley to see...well, sharks and rays. Day number two was planned for snorkeling and fishing at Mexico Rocks followed by some boat-made conch ceviche and a beach barbecue and more snorkeling after lunch / rum drinks. Day three (that was our half day) would be spent in search of manatees, which apparently leave the mangrove swamps around Ambergris Caye and spend some time in the brackish water inside the barrier reef. 

The weather had other ideas. Manatee tour? Yeah, that pretty much went off without a hitch. No weather issue there. By the time we got to our last day, the water had calmed down considerably. 

The other two days? Not smooth sailing and I mean that both literally and figuratively. Beach barbecue? Too windy. Fishing? Seas too rough (although one of the three of us and only one of us caught a non-keeper fish). Rum drinks? No rum drinks. Conch ceviche? Umm...no. Our captain found tons of conch but used the meat as bait to help us catch a non-keeper fish. Mexico Rocks? Never made it.

Day one on the seas? We did everything we planned to. Snorkeling at Hol Chan. Stopped at Shark Ray Alley and saw a ton of sharks (but no rays). Had lunch on Caye Caulker just south of Ambergris Caye. Watched tourists feed sardines to tarpon. Day two? What did we do instead of Mexico Rocks and a beach barbecue? We did the exact same thing we did on day one. 

The. Exact. Same. Thing.

Did this all work out happily for us? Actually, yes, it did. And it worked out in large part because I panicked on day one in the water when I jumped in and tried to go snorkeling.

Sharks and even more sharks at the appropriately named Shark Ray Alley.

Now, this is not the first time I've snorkeled since I started writing this blog, although admittedly, I have not done it a lot. In almost 12 years of writing these posts, I've been snorkeling on three prior trips. That's right...just three. And the last time was in 2020, just a tad more than five years ago. Did I practice swimming in all that time? Eeehhh...not so much.

So what do I do when I get into some unexpectedly choppy water off the east coast of Belize? I panicked. Too wavy. Can't breathe. Can't swim. I'm ditching this thing. Too dangerous. I bailed. And on that first day, considering we didn't go back out Hol Chan after lunch like our tour was supposed to do, my chance to see the second best barrier reef in the world was lost. Because I panicked. How stupid am I?

Now...if I'd have stuck my face in the water and started breathing through my snorkel and just followed the crowd, I'd have been fine. But I didn't do that. I got nervous with all the waves hitting me in the face with my head poking out above the surface of the water and of course I did. That's not snorkeling. That's not what you are supposed to do.

I cannot express how disappointed in myself I was. Did I get in the water with about a million (OK...maybe 20 tops) nurse sharks on the next stop? You bet I did. But the reef...uh uh. Nope!

Nurse sharks and some other fish. I love the remora on the shark in the top photo. Shark (Ray?) Alley.

So on day two when we found out we'd be doing the exact same circuit we did on day one and NOT going to Mexico Rocks and having a beach barbecue, do you think I'm disappointed? No. I was not. This was a chance to do exactly what I chickened / panicked out of the prior day. When you get a second chance in life, sometimes you just have to take it.

I just mentioned this is not my first time snorkeling since I started writing this blog. This is also not the first time I have blogged about my time on and just below the waves. Each of my prior blogs about snorkeling (Hawaii, Ecuador and the Bahamas, if you must know) have been named at least in part "Under The Sea". Hawaii was the original post and I added "Part Dos" for Ecuador and "Part Three" for the Bahamas. And in case you were wondering...yes, the posts are named after the song in The Little Mermaid.

My intent here for my Belize snorkeling is that it would become "Under The Sea, Part Four" but in the end I couldn't do it because snorkeling in Belize was that much more spectacular than any of the previous three trips. So it got "Octopus's Garden" because The Beatles are better than Alan Menken and it was the first thing that popped into my head. It's also a symbol of my lost experience on day one because our group saw an octopus on that snorkeling over the barrier reef that I missed. 

Coral and fish.

Why was snorkeling in Belize better than Hawaii, Ecuador and the Bahamas? Well how about close or close enough encounters with green turtles, eagle rays, stingrays, parrot fish (and tons of other fish) among and over the most expansive coral fields I've ever seen. In addition to a giant pile of sharks off the back of the boat and right in front of me. This was an incredible experience. And admittedly, it would have been better if I had done it twice, but I'll stop beating myself up about that issue. Probably.

In all my prior snorkel memories, I have to say I've never really seen anything that was not a fish. Well, OK, so there was a sea lion in the Galápagos but other than that, it's been just fish. Some were admittedly brightly colored and pretty impressive but they are still just fish. And yes, sharks count as fish here. 

In Belize? First ten minutes of face down time at Chan Hol and there's a green turtle munching on the sea grass at the bottom of the reef. Just right there in front of us. I know I probably sound schoolboy giddy here but this was huge for me. Not a fish. A turtle. Like 12 feet or so from me. Unbelievable. I am sure there are many, many thousands of people (if not hundreds of thousands of people) that have had a similar encounter so excuse me for going on and on about this. But...not me. Not before Belize.

Green turtle (top two pictures) and parrot fish (bottom). Just look where Marvin is pointing.

The turtle moved on. And so did we. And a couple of minutes later...sting ray. Just hiding under the sand until our guide, Marvin, spurred it into motion and it showed itself in full. Again..unbelievable. Never seen anything like that before. 20 minutes or so after that, we found an eagle ray. Two days later, we found a lobster hiding in a crevice in the coral reef we snorkeled over the top of. Not all fish. Much more than fish. This was astounding.

Now, truth be told, this is not the first time I've been snorkeling where someone I was snorkeling near or with (depending on how you view people on the same boat that I don't know) had seen a turtle. But I didn't. I also didn't see the octopus that other people we raving about on another snorkeling stop I was on. The reason I didn't see those things (or even have a chance to) is that I am pretty much blind. And when I take off my glasses, I can't see anything out of my short-sighted / near-sighted / astigmatism-plagued eyes.

This year, I could see. I bought a prescription snorkel mask.

I can't describe adequately to people who can see pretty well without glasses what a game-changer this is for me. It's literally going from not seeing to seeing. I know that sounds stupid but it's true. Anything pretty much six feet from me is totally invisible to me in an underwater environment where (let's face it...) most creatures are hiding from other creatures trying to eat them and therefore are pretty much fully camouflaged. The chances of me seeing an octopus or lobster or turtle or ray concealed with sand without a prescription mask? Pretty much nil.

So in past years when I snorkeled, if it (read: a fish) wasn't right in front of me or happened to not be visible in my GoPro videos that I had made while blindly swimming about, it pretty much got missed entirely. And it's not like these things that are camouflaged can't be missed on GoPro videos if you don't know they are there in the first place. I have to say there is pretty much no way I would have noticed the eagle ray on a video that I was blindly shooting that shows up in the third picture below. This year, I could see it with my own eyes and I got it deliberately. 

Sight. I don't know what else to say. It's pretty cool being able to see underwater. Belize has an amazing environment to snorkel. But honestly, without the prescription mask, it might have been about as good as every other place I've snorkeled in the last let's say 30 or so years.

Rays. The eagle ray is in the bottom picture. Look center left-right and just a bit higher than the midpoint up-down.

I hope that all of that sounds incredible and worth the trip down to Belize despite the less than ideal weather. And all of that doesn't even consider the manatee.

If I had made a list of creatures my size or larger that I would have been OK running into inside Belize's barrier reef (I'm assuming dolphins and humpback whales don't venture into water that shallow...) there would have been pretty much one thing on that list and that would have been a manatee. What would have been my other choices? Tiger shark? Bull shark? Crocodile? No thanks to all three of those. Manatee. That would have been it.

So I may have spoiled things a bit by writing earlier that the manatee tour we'd booked went off without a hitch but I didn't mean to imply that we actually saw one. I've been on plenty of "no hitch" nature tours that didn't yield the expected sighting of the animals we came to see. I expected the same sort of thing to happen here. I mean how big is the Caribbean Sea inside the reef and how many manatees are there hanging around Ambergris Caye and neighboring cayes?

I don't know what the exact answer to that question is but for me after snorkeling in Belize, the answer is "at least one" because we saw one. It took two stops with our captain, Sammy, (the self-proclaimed "manatee whisperer") but he got us what we went to see. Would I have preferred more than one? Sure. But one was OK. Better than none.

If the turtle and the rays and all the different types of fish were an amazing baseline exprerience (particularly with my brand new mask...), the manatee put this trip over the top. There's not a lot of action with a manatee but thankfully this one was tolerant of us swimming nearby and obviously following him and didn't turn on the jets and run. 

We spent maybe 10 minutes maximum with him. It may have been less than that. We spotted him when we first got in the water at a distance of maybe 50 to 60 feet and were able to close to within maybe 20 or less. Most of our view of him (which did include a surface for a breath of air) was from behind but he did tolerate me swimming a little alongside him which got me the first photograph below.

You can't always get what you want, especially when nature is involved but despite the unfriendly weather; the panicked and aborted first swim; and some changes in plan that on the surface seemed disappointing, this all worked out great. I am sure some of this had to do with our multiple days in and on the water but I'm certain a lot of it had to do with Belize. One more snorkeling adventure in the books, but it was certainly far superior to anything else I had ever done. Sometimes, you get lucky.

Our manatee. So cool.

So about the prescription mask...I ordered it from SeaVision USA. Based on some shopping around with various mask manufacturers, it seems like you can only get so precise on the prescription with these things but based on admittedly very limited research, SeaVision seemed to have a pretty precise range they could get to and they can do bifocals (which I theoretically need). 

To order the mask, I used a prescription from my last visit to my eye doctor but also needed the pupillary distance that I had to make a special trip back to my doctor to get (they didn't charge me for that). I thought the cost at just a bit more than $350 was extremely reasonable and the turnaround time was about four business days from order to receipt which I thought was astonishing. That's quicker than I get my glasses orders filled from my eye doctor. For what it's worth, my mom thought the cost was a lot. She clearly doesn't pay for my glasses when I get new pairs.

I can honestly see perfectly out of this mask. Like I could walk around at home with it and see if I needed to. It's pretty much the same as my glasses, and I am extremely pleased with it. I'm not sure I needed the bifocals and I'm sure they cost me a bit more. My reading vision really close up is really pretty good and I don't need to read dials or gauges the way a scuba diver might need to. Still, absolutely no complaints on this one. This product is a huge needle mover for me. I can't wait to get back in the water with some colorful fish.

Hopefully less than five years from now.